Sunday, September 5, 2010

** First of all - there are a lot of images with this entry to load in.

This last Friday, September 3rd, was Liz's birthday. LaRue and I went to Provo to help celebrate and to take Liz and Gary to a program as part of the BYU Performing Arts series - a concert with Brian Stokes Mitchell. He is a Tony Award winning performer and has been dubbed the "last leading man" on Broadway.

The afternoon began with some shopping. LaRue, Laurie, Asher and I took Liz to Bath & Body Works to let her pick out some items.

Here are Laurie, Liz and LaRue (in the background) checking out some of the merchandise:

Then it was on to Build-A-Bear where Liz picked out a monkey to build:

Asher had to pull all the stuffed cars from the shelf and line them up on the floor:

LaRue and Asher. The earrings LaRue is wearing were made out of buttons from a red winter coat that belonged to her grandmother:

LaRue and Liz at the mall:

Here is one of the tickets from the BYU Performing Arts:

Here is the cover of the program featuring Brian Stokes Mitchell:

I took this picture of the stage right after we got seated. There are empty seats at this point, but the program was completely sold out.

Here are Liz and Gary:

After the program Brian Stokes Mitchell took a couple of hours to sign autographs and take pictures. Here is LaRue getting an autograph and then posing with Mr. Mitchell. He also signed a program for Liz and wrote her a personal message wishing her a happy birthday.

Here is the autograph he gave LaRue:

After the performance we all went to Andy and Laurie's house for a little birthday celebration. Here is Liz's cake and a couple of presents:

The cake reads "Brite and bracing". That phrase along with the bottle of Coke refers to a vintage Coca Cola commercial that Andy and Liz found on YouTube. The announcer in this old commercial referred to Coca Cola as "brite and bracing".

Liz with her completed Build-A-Bear monkey:

She really cracked up at a Halloween decoration LaRue and I gave her:

Here's the birthday cake all lit up:

Blowing out the candles:

The next day LaRue and I went to see Andy at his work. He is at the BYU Broadcasting building. He told us that BYU is presently constructing a new broadcast center. When completed it will be second only to CNN for state of the art tech.

Andy at a console doing some editing. He is currently editing an episode of the Generations Project:

Saturday evening LaRue and I drove to Salt Lake City. We spent the night there and got up early Sunday morning to attend the televising of Music and the Spoken Word. The program has been airing every Sunday morning since 1929. It is the longest running program ever.

This is the program for Sunday's broadcast:

Here is LaRue at one of the fountains at the Conference Center waiting for the program:

Inside the choir and orchestra were already practicing:

In the center is one of the control stations:

On either side of the stage hang these enormous screen:

By the time the program was ready to actually begin all these seats were taken:

The program was amazing. I found it fascinating to watch the cameramen moving around the stage and seeing how the different shots were done. The program was broadcast live and ran flawlessly.

Then LaRue and I took a few minutes to wander around the Conference Center. I took a few pictures including this really nice bust of Christ:

This was on the third floor. We could see ourselves in the mirrors on the opposite side of this opening:

And when you look down this is the view:

This is an amazing statue. We hadn't seen it before. It's a statue of the First Vision: